


Tommy is a Gift

by iorion



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BAMF TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Confusion, Dream and Niki are only there for a second, Gen, Prolly OOC, Sleepy Bois Inc as Family, Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit are Siblings, i wrote this during my first 24 hours on ADHD meds so don't trust it, idk i wanted to write op tommy, modern AU but everyone has super powers, tommyinnit is a god
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29133126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iorion/pseuds/iorion
Summary: When everyone in the whole world is born with supernatural gifts, Tommy always insisted that he doesn't need one.
Comments: 151
Kudos: 1396
Collections: Completed stories I've read, Found family to make me feel something, Tommy and Tubbo Friendship Supremacy





	Tommy is a Gift

**Author's Note:**

> This is just pure word vomit. I don't think it even makes any SENSE. I wrote it after taking my ADHD meds for the first time and it felt like a solid way to spend the day at the time. If this is the first you're seeing of my writing, I'm gonna implore you to check out my other work after this because it's actually edited and structured and not.. well. THIS ISN'T TERRIBLE.... it's just.. a lot. Thanks for reading!

Nobody knew exactly when Tommy was born. 

According to his paperwork, he simply sprouted into existence on a whim. At some point in his infancy, he was brought to the orphanage where Phil adopted him, but nobody in the staff could agree on a day that he arrived. 

Some claimed they found him in one of the vacant cradles one day and wondered why they hadn’t been alerted of the newcomer before sighing and preparing food for another empty mouth. 

Some said they saw him dropped off at the door in a bundle of cloth and a gust of wind, but it was late and they hadn’t found time to prepare his documents until weeks later, when he’d already become one of the many nameless faces within the orphanage. 

Truthfully, they were all just too busy to remember. When one is in charge of a hundred abandoned children, it’s impossible to pay any one of them enough attention to mentally catalogue the details of fragile pasts.

Not even a past-reader could gauge an accurate birthdate for him. When the man placed his hands on the child’s head, he found that nothing came up. Tommy was empty of anything that could tie him to the world’s memory. 

It was unusual, but not impossible. Sometimes gifts just clashed with one another. Everyone assumed Tommy’s fifth birthday would reveal some sort of mind-blocking gift, and went on with their day. 

So when the time came to make him a legitimate member of society, they gave him a random birthdate—April 9th—and a name from an advertisement in the paper that morning. 

Thus began the legal existence of Tommy Doe. 

It would pose problems when the time came for him to receive his gift, but that was nothing they hadn’t experienced before. Children with unknown birthdays would remain unknown until midnight on the first day of their fifth year, and then they would light up like a beacon bestowed by their gift and the mystery would be solved. 

Tommy was adopted when he was approximately eight months old. 

Phil had felt, for a while before that day, that his family was not complete. It was like an itch at the back of his skull, whenever he tucked Techno and Wilbur into bed and stalled as he turned out the light, thinking he’d forgotten someone. 

A phantom third child left a space in every family photo, and the guest room down the hall felt heavy with some inexplicable emptiness. It was a space that needed to be filled. 

So when he went to the orphanage, something in his brain clicked. 

Tommy wasn’t doing anything unique to the others, and Phil wasn’t planning on adopting a child as young as Tommy was, but the moment his eyes locked with those round cornflower blues, it was like a physical tug in his chest. 

That baby would be going home with him. 

The lack of a known birthdate was something of a shock when he was briefed in the adoption signing, but the kind nurse in charge was happy to explain to him what she’d said to many others. 

When his beacon goes off, it’ll be impossible to miss. 

So Phil hauled the cheap baby seat into the back of his car, buckled Tommy in snugly, and left his two eight year olds to ooh and aah over their new brother as they drove to go replace all the guest furniture with a crib and a rocking chair. 

As the days turned into months, Phil was surprised to see Techno—his scowly little son—was the quickest to acclimate to the new member of their family. He’d stand in front of Tommy’s high chair at the table and catch every chunk of flying dinner before it hit the ground, calmly explaining how his gift let him see where Tommy was going to throw them seconds in advance. Techno talked to Tommy like they were comrades in arms, discussing battle strategies over a round table. 

“How’s he gonna learn how to talk if we just goo-goo ga-ga at him?” Techno snorted one day when Wilbur pointed out that the baby wouldn’t know what ‘hello’ meant, let alone the names of the Greek heroes Techno told stories about. 

Wilbur was slightly more apprehensive of the baby (that’s what he called Tommy for the first couple months—The Baby). He made some attempts to talk to Tommy when he and Techno got back from school in the afternoons, but they’d usually end with Wilbur rolling his eyes and walking away, muttering about how Tommy’s stare freaked him out. 

Tommy did have quite a little penchant for staring. He wouldn’t cry often, because Phil could usually tell what he wanted in the way Tommy would just turn and glare at whatever plaything was out of reach until someone brought it over to him. 

It creeped Wilbur out, but Techno liked the way Tommy would gaze up at him whenever they talked, as though Tommy was really listening. 

Phil was starting to seriously worry about Wilbur and Tommy’s relationship when four months came and went without Wilbur spending more than a few minutes at a time in the same room as Tommy aside from mealtimes.

But then, one night, when Tommy woke Phil up with his crying, Phil staggered over to Tommy’s room only to see Wilbur already there, using his gift to sing away Tommy’s nightmares. 

The next morning at breakfast, Wilbur sang a little song about a baby astronaut, and Tommy shrieked with delight when a small cloud of stars appeared around his head. Translucent little rockets twirled around the kitchen, and Tommy spent the morning crawling after them, erupting in peals of laughter when they dissolved into puffs of smoke in his hands. 

As the months crept by, Tommy learned to speak. For all of Wilbur’s teasing, Phil wondered if Techno’s hours spent chatting at the baby were actually the reason for Tommy’s silver tongue. Wilbur swears up and down that Tommy’s first words were ‘I want juice,’ when they were alone in the kitchen one day. The first words Phil heard were ‘Dada, look!’ Techno claims that he and Tommy made detailed plans to abolish the government in the dead of night, and that Tommy managed to spit out the word ‘disestablishmentarianism.’

Phil trusts his sons’ stories, but privately, he clings to that first ‘Dada’ with the same fluttery excitement as the day he’d first heard it. 

Regardless of what Tommy’s very first words were, they all agreed that he started one day and never stopped. Tommy could talk about anything and everything, both detailed and vague. He was like a pocket-sized narrator of everything around him, proclaiming his opinions on any situation that crossed his path. 

“Maybe your gift will be like Wilbur’s,” Phil laughed one day in the backyard. The kids were running around the lawn trying to catch fireflies in jars. Techno had the most, since he could predict their movements, and Tommy had only the one that had flown into the jar on accident while he was holding it up and explaining that the bugs were probably jealous of the stars. 

“Why?” Wilbur asked mid-song. He’d been trying to conjure phantom hands that could fly around and catch the fireflies for him, but even with the extra limbs, his gift couldn’t program them with more knowledge of the bugs’ flight patterns than he already had in his own brain.

“Think about it,” Phil prodded. “For all he talks, I’d be surprised if he doesn’t wake up on his fifth birthday with the ability to speak towers into existence.”

They all laughed, except Tommy, who screwed his three year old face up into a confused frown. “Are you talking about my gift?”

“Yes, love,” Phil smiled. “Just making guesses about what it could be—no matter what it is, though, I’m sure it’ll be wonderful.” He was always careful not to set Tommy’s expectations too high or low for when the time came. Wilbur and Techno were freshly gifted when he’d adopted them, so he wasn’t there on the night they got them, but he knew it took an emotional toll. 

Techno was bullied by his previous home for being a bit of a runt, and he was raised expecting a gift that would only confirm his imagined weakness. When Techno realized what he’d been given—the ability to dodge his bullies’ punches before they swung—it was like the world unfurled beneath him, an ocean of opportunity. 

Wilbur didn’t talk much about life before Phil, but when he did, he gave the impression that they didn’t quite appreciate his gift. He said that people expected him to be able to run at the speed of sound—with his already long legs—or maybe be able to control people with his songs like a siren-type. When they found out that all he could do was conjure semi-physical apparitions of colored smoke, they’d been less than thrilled. 

Phil worked hard to show them how to use their gifts to their full potential, and make sure they didn’t feel any more or less special because of them. They were still people, and people should be cherished, no matter what the universe gifted them with on their fifth birthdays. It’s the people that are important, not their abilities.

“That’s dumb,” Tommy said, drawing Phil from his thoughts. “I  _ am  _ a gift.” His face was dead serious. 

Phil smiled so wide his cheeks hurt. 

“That’s right,” he said earnestly. “You are, and always will be.”

Satisfied, Tommy nodded and returned to his speech about fireflies and stars, and Phil breathed an internal sigh of relief. Tommy would be raised to not base his self-worth off his gift. It was a beautiful thought. 

As the dusk of Tommy’s fourth year approached, their house grew electric with anticipation. Every morning before school, Techno and Wilbur would barge into their father’s room and ask if there had been any light. Every morning, Phil shook his head with a smile and told them not to rush it. 

Since they didn’t know Tommy’s exact birthdate, Phil had kept careful records of every one of Tommy’s baby milestones, using them to estimate his age in months. From there he narrowed the window of his fifth birthday down to a couple weeks-long window, and as the time approached, he pinned a photosensitive piece of paper to Tommy’s wall, just above his bed. 

Every morning, he would check it to see if it reacted to the way Tommy’s body would someday soon light up like a flare, the way every five year old’s did on the midnight of their fifth birthday. That was the sign of their souls expanding, making room for a gift unique to them, handcrafted by the universe itself. 

On the midnight of Phil’s fifth birthday, his parents stayed up with him until the clock struck midnight, and his living room was showered in blinding light. Once it faded, Phil was left with a pair of glowing white wings that he could conjure with just a thought. They were large and gangly when they first appeared, but Phil learned how to dissolve them into his back when he wasn’t using them. Eventually, he grew into them, and would sometimes let them out to stretch around the house. 

Tommy was the only one not excited for his gift. Every time Wilbur or Techno would ask what he thought it might be, Tommy would shrug and say, “I don’t need a gift.”

At first, Phil worried that maybe he’d been a bit  _ too  _ persistent with his teachings that gifts didn’t make the person. As much as he wanted his sons to derive their self-worth from other things, he also recognized that the gifts were called  _ gifts  _ for a reason. 

They were handcrafted by the universe, built specifically for each and every individual in the world. No one was left without or wanting, because even the smallest gifts could be transformed into exactly the right tools for that person. One of Wilbur’s closest school friends, Niki, was simply given the gift of cheer. When she smiled, her cheeks glowed with faint pink light, and anyone who was close enough to see it would smell freshly-baked cookies and feel as though they were wrapped in a warm embrace for hours after. 

Other gifts were more obvious, like Techno’s so-called rival, Dream, who could run and jump any distance without getting tired. It only worked when activated, so he still was able to participate fairly in schoolyard races, but Techno still has yet to beat him in playground parkour and it irritated him endlessly. 

Tommy stubbornly refused to engage in any sort of hypothetical conversation about his gift. He always insisted that he was enough of a gift as it is, and that it would be ‘counterintuitive’ to pin him down with any one special ability. 

Maybe he was just confused by the whole concept, maybe he understood it more than any four year old Phil had ever met. When Phil picked Tommy up from daycare every afternoon, Tommy would be all surly growls and folded arms, scoffing that all his friends were too ‘up their own arse’ about their future gifts to play soldiers with him. 

One such day, Phil pulled up to the daycare curb to see the sky over the usual pickup spot clouded with dark static. 

Heart throbbing in his chest, Phil leapt out of his car without bothering to take his keys out of the ignition. It wasn’t uncommon for kids Tommy’s age to lose control of their gifts every once in a while, which is why most primary schools and daycares had people with nullifying-type gifts on the staff. 

If the massive cloud of darkness was still there at this time of day, something terrible must’ve happened to keep the adults from putting a stop to it. 

“Tommy!” Phil cried, throwing open the pastel painted gate to the little patch of lawn where the kids were usually left to run around and play while they waited for their parents to come pick them up. 

As Phil got closer, he noticed that the static cloud seemed to vibrate with noise, a rumbling drone like a swarm of insects irritating his ears. 

He sprinted down the cobble stairs leading to the lawn, then turned the corner, and ran straight into someone’s back. 

The person—another parent, he recognized, her name started with a J—turned around, a strange mixture of emotions paling her face. 

“Sorry—what’s going on?” Phil asked frantically. There was a small crowd of parents standing around the lawn, blocking his view. The woman’s expression twisted into a bewildered smile. 

“I—well, truthfully, I’m not sure!” she said with a strained laugh, nearly shouting over the buzzing noise. She shuffled to the side a bit, and Phil shouldered into the space she left, eyes searching the lawn for his son. 

Phil found him immediately. Tommy was running excited circles around a boy with soft brown hair, giggling maniacally and pumping his fists. Phil could barely hear Tommy’s usual piercing laughs over the drone of noise. Under the shade of some trees at the edge of the lawn, the rest of Tommy’s class was huddled together, staring at the scene with a mixture of terror and awe. 

When Tommy caught Phil’s gaze, he brightened, pointing to the boy standing in the middle of the fray. 

“Dad!” Tommy shouted. “Dad, look! Tubbo’s controlling the bees!” Then he turned back to his friend and screamed in delight, yelling something inaudible from Phil’s distance, leaving Phil to wonder if he’d heard that right. 

The boy blushed and laughed, then raised his hand up to the cloud. At once, the swirling particles swarmed closer together, slowly morphing themselves into a ball. The ball then expanded out into a more squarish form, and ever so slowly, they swirled into the shape of… a middle finger. 

Tommy shrieked with delight, falling onto his back as coughs wracked his body with the sheer force of his laughter. The boy controlling the swarm blushed harder, then dropped his hand. The cloud dispersed, scattering in neat little lines off in varying directions, until they were completely gone.

The silence was astounding, broken only by Tommy’s teary giggles. 

“That’s… really something,” said one parent to Phil’s right, and it was like the spell was broken. 

All at once, the adults’ shoulders relaxed, and they all rushed to the group of children under the trees, asking if their kids were alright. 

Phil followed more slowly, face slack with… something. It was some form of shock, but he couldn’t pin down the emotion exactly. 

Tommy met him halfway, bouncing on his heels and tugging the boy along with him. 

“Dad! Tubbo has the absolute coolest gift—did you see that? He can mind control  _ bees! _ Tubbo, you are just incredible—Dad, did you see that? The bees gave us the bird!” Tommy rambled, pausing only once to take a deep lungful of air before continuing on his tangent. 

Phil took a better look at the boy—Tubbo—who was smiling just as big as Tommy. Over the bridge of his nose, a little band of yellow and black stripes sat like a band-aid, stretching to just below the corners of his eyes. Over his shoulder, Phil could see two filmy insect wings twitching and fluttering excitedly with Tommy’s every word. 

“That’s quite a unique gift, Tubbo—was it?” Phil finally interrupted Tommy, tearing his gaze from the boy’s wings. 

“Yeah, today’s my birthday,” Tubbo chirped. “Teacher said I could show Tommy after school.”

“Happy birthday,” Phil said. “I’m sure the flowers around town will be much brighter now with your help.”

Tubbo brightened. “Thank you! I was thinking the same thing!”

When Phil finally managed to tear Tommy away from his fanatic raving over his friend and buckle him into his carseat, Tommy’s eyelids were drooping with exhaustion. 

“Sounds like you had an eventful day,” Phil chuckled. He’d need to go fill the car’s tank before returning home, all that time spent with the engine idling had guzzled the gauge down to empty. 

“It was brilliant, just brilliant,” Tommy sighed contentedly. “I knew Tubbo’s gift would be that big. He’s so cool.”

“Big…?” Phil echoed, glancing at Tommy’s face in the rearview mirror. Tommy was gazing back at him with the same intensity he always did when he was determined about something. 

“Yeah, his soul had a lot of space to fill, and he’s smart and nice, so he’s gonna be extraordinary. That’s why he’s my best friend!” Tommy insisted. 

Phil didn’t quite know what to say to that. 

“Perhaps you’d like to invite him over to play sometime,” he suggested instead. 

Tommy shouted an unintelligible affirmation. 

“Alright, tomorrow at school, tell him to ask his parents to wait behind in case I get there after them. I’ll introduce myself and arrange something,” Phil laughed. 

Exhaustion forgotten, Tommy spent the rest of the drive chattering about all the trouble they would get up to during their playdate. 

Two weeks later, Phil and Tubbo’s parents arranged a carpool system so that the boys could alternate staying at the other’s houses after school, every day except Wednesdays. It was easier than nearly colliding with one another at the daycare pickup each afternoon as Tommy and Tubbo pushed their adults around and begged for playdate after playdate after playdate.

Two weeks later, there still was no sign of Tommy’s gift. 

Phil stood in Tommy’s room, frowning at the photosensitive paper as paranoia started swirling in his gut. He’d been careful, setting up the timeline, but there were so many unknown variables. Babies developed at different speeds, he knew this from the thousands of parenting books he’d poured over the days after adopting Tommy. 

What if Tommy was an exceptionally late-bloomer? That would mean they might have missed his fifth birthday, and Tommy might be running around with some dormant gift that Phil had no time to prepare for. 

And if Phil’s calculations were too early, then Phil might have enrolled him in school a year ahead of what he should’ve, and then when Tommy got to high school he wouldn’t be as mentally mature as his peers and he’d fall behind and his self esteem could plummet because he’s not doing as well on his tests and then he’d lose motivation to even try and that would start a whole rollercoaster of mental health issues and—

Phil took a deep breath. 

No, his calculations were fine. Tommy was fine. They still had another week in the window of Tommy’s potential fifth birthday, so Phil shouldn’t be worrying so much. 

Besides, tomorrow will be the day on Tommy’s current birth certificate, and they’ll celebrate it the same as they had every year. If tonight so happened to show it was his accurate birthday, universe willing, it would save Phil a lot of paperwork. 

Phil sighed and left the room. 

The next morning, the photosensitive paper was still unmarked. 

Still, Wilbur brought out his guitar and sang Tommy’s favorite song about astronauts, and the breakfast table was decorated with a bright red tablecloth and a vase of roses Phil trimmed from the garden that morning. He left the thorns attached since Tommy always insisted that it was important (and badass) to leave nature with its weapons. 

As Wilbur sang, the vase of flowers drifted up into the inky cloud of summoned stars over their heads, unhindered by the earth’s gravity. When Wilbur turned ten, he learned that his gift was amplified by instruments. He’d been practicing using his guitar to manipulate the physical world around his smoky mirages, and Phil’s heart swelled every time there was a new breakthrough. 

Tommy laughed and danced around the room to Wilbur’s tune, and when the song stopped Techno’s hand was already out, catching every drop of floaty water and each of the roses neatly in the vase before it dropped to the table. 

Phil drove Tommy to daycare and Wilbur and Techno caught the bus to school on time. When Phil returned to his office at home, he settled down in front of the computer and tried not to worry. 

Once the sun was a round-bellied lantern behind the western forest, Tubbo’s parents dropped Tommy off back at their house after taking the boys for a couple hours while Phil, Wilbur, and Techno finished wrapping the last of Tommy’s presents. 

“I’m home!” Tommy called, closing the front door behind him. 

“In here,” Techno shouted from the living room. Phil set aside his laptop and smiled when Tommy came skipping around the corner. His eyes lit up, spying the small pile of wrapped packages on the coffee table. He scrambled over to the big armchair by the fireplace, perching himself proudly in the designated birthday-boy seat that was draped in sparkly streamers. 

“Guys, look what Tubbo got me!” Tommy exclaimed, hastily pulling a silver chain from beneath his shirt. At the end of the necklace, a small pendant of dark metal swirled with soft violet light. “His dad is a nav-enchanter, see? It’s a compass!” 

Phil’s eyes widened when Tommy pushed a button on the side of the pendant and it swung open, revealing a quivering red needle. People with enchanting-type gifts could weave certain gift characteristics into ordinary objects, giving the owners of said objects a little sample of power. Phil had met flame-enchanters who could endow saucepans with the ability to instantly boil water, and thorn-enchanters who crafted specialized chests that would harm anyone who tried to open them unless you had the matching key. 

“Nav-enchanter?” Wilbur puzzled, raising a dark eyebrow at the compass.

“Yeah, he can make maps ‘n shit. The needle always points to Tubbo—he has a matching one—so now we won’t ever be apart!” Tommy explained, raising his volume a little over Phil’s alarmed squawk at the curse word. 

“I think Tommy’s trying to replace us, Wilbur,” Techno grumbled with a little smirk. “We might wake up homeless one day, with Tubbo named as Tommy’s new brother.”

“Ooh, Phil, can I do that?” Tommy asked hopefully, tucking his little compass back safe under his shirt. 

“I’d have to ask Tubbo’s parents,” Phil replied with a shrug. Techno and Wilbur sputtered indignantly, turning to Phil with equal expressions of betrayal, and Phil burst out laughing. “Alright, alright, I was kidding—let’s let Tommy open his presents, then we can eat dinner.”

“And cake?” Tommy asked, tilting his head.

“And cake,” Phil promised. “Here, open this one first—it’s from me.”

One by one, they passed Tommy his presents, who tore into the paper with a violence unfitting for his tiny frame. Phil stood behind the couch, camera in hand, snapping pictures each time Tommy’s eyes lit up when he recognized what was inside. 

From Phil, there was a set of speakers for when he wanted to play music in his room, and a colorful plastic gun that shot enchanted foam bullets that would reload themselves once the magazine was empty. He got a pair of fluffy slippers in the shape of lions from Techno, who had an identical set of pig slippers that Tommy was always trying to steal. Wilbur gave him a disc that was burned with all of Tommy’s favorite songs, along with a few of Wilbur’s originals that he’d recorded in the jazz studio at school. 

Tommy thanked them profusely after each one, enthusiasm never dampening. He’d wanted to start playing with them all right away, but Phil convinced him to set the gifts aside until after they ate. They gathered around the kitchen table and Phil brought out the homemade pizzas from where they’d been kept warm in the oven, and they all laughed when Wilbur retold the story of when Tommy got in a fight with a baby bird. 

As dinner wound down, Phil flicked out the lights and brought in a heavily decorated cake that Wilbur and Niki helped bake after school, with five sparkly candles poked around the curled sugar shaped like delicate flames. Niki had to teach them how to make them, and even though Phil was wary of letting a thirteen year old handle molten sugar, hers came out much prettier than Phil and Wilbur’s clumpy attempts. 

“Make a wish!” Phil said, like he did every year. 

“That’s dangerous,” Tommy replied, like he did every year. He always refused to elaborate, and it always drew a snort from Techno. 

Then Tommy blew out the candles and Phil served each of them a piece, making sure to let everyone try one of the flame-shaped candies. 

“Now I’m finally the same age as Tubbo, I’m gonna challenge him to an arm wrestle,” Tommy announced around a mouthful of cake. 

“Not yet,” Wilbur pointed out. “We still don’t know your real fifth birthday.”

“Well, I do,” Tommy said with a scowl. “It’s today.”

“We’re  _ celebrating  _ it today, but this is just what they put on your papers. You still haven’t gotten your gift,” Techno clarified slowly. 

“Don’t talk like that, I’m not dumb,” Tommy snarled, though his smile betrayed that he wasn’t actually angry. “And I know for certain that this is my real birthday. I don’t need a gift, I am a gift.”

“Right, of course,” Wilbur scoffed, rolling his eyes. “You’re enough as you are, not the sum of your abilities, blah blah blah. You still won’t know for  _ certain  _ when your real birthday is until your gift, though.”

Tommy narrowed his eyes. “I think I would know more about my own birthday than you, dickhead.”

“I hope you’re not using that kind of language at school,” Phil sighed into his cake. Perhaps he should have been more diligent about policing Wilbur and Techno’s vocabulary around their little parrot.

“Oh yeah? Then how do you know today is your birthday? Do you remember being born?” Techno countered, ignoring Phil. 

“No,” Tommy admitted, “but rules don’t apply to me. I just know.”

Wilbur opened his mouth to retort, but Phil put a hand up, halting the conversation before it could evolve into a real argument. “Alright, enough of that. Anyone want more cake?”

All three of them raised their hands. 

Later that night, when Phil tucked Tommy into bed and adjusted the paper by the headboard, he caught Tommy gazing at him with those same hardened blue eyes. Tommy’s mouth was pressed into a thin line, and his hands fidgeted restlessly with the hem of his blanket. 

“Everything alright?” Phil asked softly. 

Tommy shook his head. 

“What’s wrong?” Phil put a hand on Tommy’s forehead, checking for a temperature, but Tommy caught it and held onto Phil’s pointer and pinky finger with a tight grip. 

“I meant it, earlier,” Tommy whispered. “Today is my real birthday.”

Phil let out a slow breath through his nose. Then he knelt by Tommy’s bed so they were eye-level, curling both of his hands over Tommy’s.

“Oh, Tommy, I know it’s hard, not having the date set in stone like most people, but that’s just why you’re so special. And if you really like having today as your birthday, we can still celebrate it every year just the same, nothing has to change—”

“You’re not listening to me,” Tommy interrupted. His eyes bore into Phil’s like a laser in the blue moonlight. “At the end of tonight, my fifth birthday will have come and gone. I’ve been trying to tell you, but you’re not listening.”

Not for the first time, Tommy left Phil at a loss for words.

The silence hung in the air for a few more moments, then Tommy’s gaze snapped away. He snuggled deeper into his pillows and closed his eyes.

“I—Alright, Tommy. I love you,” Phil said at last. He kissed Tommy’s hair then rose to his feet, casting the tiny bundle of blankets an uncertain glance before heading to the door. “Goodnight.”

As he stepped into the hall and closed the door, Tommy responded with something that would play in Phil’s head on repeat for years after.

“Goodnight, Dad. Love you too. And that paper is never gonna tell you anything.”

They kept the paper up for a year. 

On the morning of his sixth birthday, Tommy took it down and brought it to Phil with a wry little smile and an announcement that he had a movie poster from Tubbo that he wanted to put up in its place. Phil nodded numbly and watched as Tommy crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into the bin, nonchalant as ever. 

They tried to take him to doctors, once two months passed by after Tommy’s fifth birthday and there still was no sign of his gift, but every one of them were completely stumped. It was impossible to not be gifted. No one in history had ever lived to see their fifth year pass without that telltale beacon of light. Phil replaced the paper again and again, checking it against blinding torches to make sure it hadn’t been washed out by the sun even though it was specially engineered to only pick up the light from a child’s gift. 

The week after his sixth birthday, Phil took Tommy to a specialist, whose gift allowed her to copy the gift of anyone she touched for as long as she was touching them. If it was a child younger than five, she could make minor predictions as to what the gift might be, based on her prior knowledge of how most gift-types manifested in the body. Some first-time parents took comfort in knowing what to expect, even if her predictions weren’t always accurate. The universe worked in mysterious ways and spoke in a language nobody understood, but she could always sense something was there. Even if she translated it wrong, she still recognized it.

She explained all this, then demonstrated by pressing two fingers to Phil’s hand. 

“Ah, I see,” she said with a smile, then a pair of wings identical to Phil’s appeared on her back. When she withdrew her hand, the wings dissolved like sparks from a firework. 

Tommy hid behind Phil’s legs, glaring daggers the whole time. 

“Alright, little one, let’s see if we can guess what your gift will be. When’s your birthday?” she asked, lowering herself into a chair so she wasn’t looking down at Tommy. 

“April 9th,” Tommy said sourly. The specialist’s eyebrows rose to her hairline and she looked up at Phil, who gave her a helpless little shrug. 

“That’s what he insists, but we don’t actually know. His birth certificate was unclear,” Phil explained. 

“Hmm,” she tapped a finger to her chin, then raised her glasses a little higher so she could get a better look at Tommy, who only hid further behind Phil’s legs. “So you want me to see if he’s gotten his gift yet? He looks to be around five years old, but appearances can be deceiving. There’s a possibility his birthdate was way off.”

“Yes, exactly,” Phil said with a relieved sigh. “Go on Tommy, touch her hand.”

“I don’t wanna,” Tommy growled. 

“Tommy,” Phil said tiredly. “I know you’re set in your mind, but if you let this nice lady take a quick peek, it’ll make me and your brothers feel a lot better about it. Please?”

Tommy let out an exasperated groan and slowly inched out from behind Phil, keeping his arms glued to his side. The specialist held her hand out expectantly, and after a few more moments of deliberation, Tommy finally gave her his hand, turning his angry glare over his shoulder at Phil instead. 

The specialist’s cool hand closed around Tommy’s smaller one, and Phil held his breath. Her face was open, blank, but a couple seconds passed and her expression morphed in confusion. She blinked a few times, then closed her eyes entirely, focusing intently on what her gift was telling her. 

Then she opened her eyes and turned to Phil, shock written across her face, and Phil felt the last of his hope crumble away. 

“This is… not possible,” she whispered. “Even if he was a gift-nullifier, I’d be able to sense it being blocked. My gift isn’t hitting any walls. It’s not hitting anything.”

“What does that mean, then?” Phil asked, already knowing the answer. 

“There’s nothing,” she said, voice hushed. “There’s just… nothing.”

Tommy pulled his hand back and folded his arms. 

When they left the specialist’s office, Tommy looked at Phil’s resigned expression and mirrored it. His blue eyes welled up with tears. 

“I am a gift,” Tommy murmured. Then, louder, “I  _ am  _ a gift. Why is that not enough?”

Phil’s footsteps stalled, shiny dress shoes skidding against the asphalt of the parking lot. He stopped and looked down at Tommy, whose shoulders trembled with barely-contained sobs. 

Phil made a heartbroken noise and swept Tommy into his arms, cradling him tight against his chest like he did when Tommy was just a baby, soft and tiny. 

Tommy sobbed and clung to Phil’s shirt, and Phil realized that he’d broken one of the first promises he ever made as a father. He made Tommy feel like the quality of his gift—or lack thereof—was worth more than Tommy himself.

Phil spent the rest of the day apologizing and holding Tommy close. They sat on the couch in the living room and watched happy cartoons, and whenever there was a silence Phil would press a kiss into Tommy’s hair and murmur,  _ You are a gift. You are a gift. You are a gift.  _

As the years went on, the family started to realize that Tommy wasn’t just being cute every time he said his signature line, ‘I am a gift.’ Even from when he was three years old, Tommy was trying to tell them an absolute truth. 

Tommy was a gift. 

When Wilbur was fourteen, he broke his wrist falling down the stairs at school. The doctors put him in a thick cast and one used their gift to help speed up the healing process, but since it wasn’t a dire injury, they couldn’t risk exhausting their energy to heal him all the way. 

Wilbur disagreed, it  _ was  _ dire, because if he couldn’t play his guitar, he was going to just keel over and die. 

Despite his proclamations otherwise, Wilbur did not pass away, but he did spend many days holed up in his room sulking. 

Tommy, seven at the time, knocked on Wilbur’s door on the third day of his self-inflicted solitary confinement. He let himself in without waiting for Wilbur to give permission. 

Wilbur was curled on his side, scrolling through his phone with his back to the door. When heard Tommy open the door, he looked over his shoulder and scowled darkly.

“I’m not hungry,” he grouched. 

“It’s not dinner time yet,” Tommy shrugged. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Well I don’t,” Wilbur grumbled, then turned back to his phone, hoping to shut his younger brother out before Tommy could try to cajole him into going downstairs and spending time with the family. 

Instead of leaving, Tommy closed the door behind him and walked up to the bed, waiting silently. Two could play at that game, though, and Wilbur was determined not to be the first to speak. 

It didn’t take long for Tommy to sigh and plop himself down onto the edge of the mattress. In the reflection of Wilbur’s phone screen, he could see Tommy had a strange, sad smile on his face. 

“I wish you could feel what I feel,” Tommy said at last. 

That was not what Wilbur was expecting to hear. “What do you mean?” he asked with a frown, finally turning to look Tommy in the eye properly. 

Tommy shrugged. “You wouldn’t know.”

“Yeah?” Wilbur scoffed. He turned off his phone and pulled himself up to sitting, his heavy cast dragging against the grey bed sheets. The sound just irritated him, and he shot his injured arm a withering glare. “Why wouldn’t I know?”

“Because I’m me, and you’re you. Only empaths can feel other peoples’ feelings,” Tommy sighed. 

“Duh,” Wilbur rolled his eyes and drew his knees up to his chest. “Is that all you came in here to say? That you’re sad I’m not an empath?”

“No,” Tommy shook his head, not rising to the bait of teasing. “I actually just wanted to come in here and ask why you’re so upset over this.”

“Are you stupid?” Wilbur snarled. “My arm is fucking broken. I can’t play guitar, I can’t hold anything properly, I can’t even lay down comfortably without this giant hunk of gauze weighing me down!” He lifted his cast up and let it thump against his knees for emphasis. “And it fucking hurts.”

“But it won’t hurt forever,” Tommy pointed out. “You’ll be able to do all those things once it’s healed, and you know for a fact that it’ll be healed. You’re already healing now, as we speak.”

“Yeah, but it sucks right now,” Wilbur growled. “I’m not healed right now.”

“So you’re upset right now,” Tommy nodded. “I understand that.”

Wilbur only grunted in affirmation, glaring out the window to the open blue sky. 

“Well, you should remember how extraordinary you are,” Tommy chirped. His legs swung in little movements over the edge of Wilbur’s bed. 

“Where’d that come from?” Wilbur snorted. 

“Same place it always has,” Tommy replied cryptically. “Kinda loops back to what I was saying earlier, about you feeling what I feel. I may not be an empath, but I can feel that you’re extraordinary. I always have. Broken arm or no, you’re still my extraordinary big brother.”

“Whatever,” Wilbur mumbled, cheeks burning. Tommy could be such a weirdo sometimes.

“I mean it,” Tommy said seriously. “You are extraordinary, and you will heal.”

Then he hopped off the bed, leaving Wilbur staring incredulously at his retreating blond head. 

“Love you, see you soon,” Tommy called over his shoulder once he reached the door. 

Less than an hour later, Wilbur joined them for his first family dinner in three days, and he only looked a  _ little  _ scowly. 

When Tommy was nine and Techno was sixteen, Techno failed his first big exam. 

He was ready for the grade, he’d been expecting it ever since he sat down in front of the test and felt his concentration dissolve into a puddle on the floor. With just fifteen minutes to go, he did as much as he could and filled the rest of the scantron with a solid line down C. 

He tried not to let it get to him. His gift let him predict movement around him, but it couldn’t predict when Techno’s brain would pack up and abandon him for a quick vacation to Distraction Town. There was no way he could’ve prepared for that to happen, so there was no use whining about it. 

But still, when he got the test back, covered in neat red strokes and three big question marks written at the top next to the letter D, Techno felt his heart thunk down to his stomach. 

He stared at those question marks the whole bus ride home, loathing them with all his being. 

He didn’t know either. 

He didn’t know why he was like this, or why he needed to fight, claw, and tear his way through the school day just to be evenly paced with the most average of his peers. It was just something that happened to him, and it sucked. There was no bright side, it just  _ sucked.  _

Tommy was standing on the front steps when Techno made it back home. His arms were folded, and there was an unreadable emotion in his eyes. 

“Hey, Tommy,” Techno grunted, shoving the failed test into his jacket pocket. 

“You’re upset,” Tommy said without preamble, causing Techno to falter in his steps. 

“Nah,” Techno shrugged.  _ Deflect, deflect, deflect!  _ “Just tired. What’re you doing out here?”

“You’re tired, but you’re also upset. Is it because of school?” Tommy asked, dodging Techno’s question. 

“I—what? Yeah, I guess so, did the school call or something? Tell you to interrogate me right when I got home?” Techno’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m just trying to cheer you up,” Tommy said, avoiding the question again. “I know you’re tired, so I’ll make this quick: you can do anything. I know you might think that your own thoughts get in the way of that sometimes, but the wiring of your brain doesn’t change the fact that you are capable of anything you want to do. If you wanted to run as fast as Dream, you could find a way to do it. If you wanted to pass every test, you could find a way to do it. You might need to take some extra steps to get there, but the point is just that you’ll get there. I can feel it.”

Techno stared, blank-faced and slack-jawed at his little brother, who was glaring at him with such determination he was almost convinced. 

As if reacting to Techno’s thoughts, Tommy ducked his head, folding his arms closer around his chest. 

“You don’t have to take my word for it, just—just keep it in mind.” With that, Tommy turned on his heel and marched inside, leaving Techno standing alone on the front steps with a bewildered frown on his face. 

Techno was able to retake the test a couple weeks later, after Phil listened to Techno’s explanation and brought him to a doctor that asked him all sorts of questions about his focus and organization habits and a dozen other things. He left the office that day with a diagnosis, prescription, and a list of accommodations the school would give him from then on. 

When Tommy was sixteen, the science lab caught fire. 

One of the students left a hot plate on during the last period, and through sheer bad luck, a breeze from the open window knocked the loose pins out from a poster of the periodic table. It landed on the flat square of blistering metal, ignited, and the same breeze fanned oxygen into the fire until it lapped up the walls. 

The flames crawled over every inch of flammable drywall, eating away at the room until it became an inferno. The door to the supply closet was closed, and the two students inside were too absorbed in their hunt for spare litmus papers (I swear on my pitch black fifth birthday, Tubbo, honey is acidic—wha—I know how it tastes!) to notice the blaze until the air was entirely choked with smoke. 

They burst out the storage room only to find that every feasible escape route was already engulfed in bitter yellow and orange flames.

By the time the fire department caught wind of the fire, it was so big that any person who might’ve been trapped inside was beyond saving. 

The fire was put out before it reached any of the neighboring classrooms, and in the blackened remains, firefighters found the two students, curled around each other on the ground. 

One was covered head to toe in blood and scorch marks.

The other was completely unharmed. 

One was taken away on a stretcher.

The other was left, pale and clutching a silvery shock blanket around his shoulders, without even a single cough from smoke inhalation. 

That’s how Tubbo’s parents found him, with his feet dangling from the back of a parked ambulance while a bewildered paramedic asked—once again—if he was  _ sure _ he didn’t need a puff or two from the oxygen mask. 

When asked what happened, Tubbo said the same thing to the police, the firemen, the paramedics, and his parents:

“I don’t know how, but Tommy saved me.”

Tommy regained consciousness on his second day in the hospital. 

His whole body was wrapped in bandages, and his mouth was hooked up to a machine that pumped breaths in and out of his body when his lungs didn’t do the work themselves. 

A nurse checked his vitals—then checked them again—before taking him off the machine. By some miracle, his lungs were already improving.

A couple hours later, he was able to sit up and respond to his family’s frantic cries of relief. 

“Tommy!” Phil reached out, as if to wrap his son up in a tight embrace, but there wasn’t a single inch of Tommy’s skin not ravaged by burns and blisters. 

“Hey Dad,” Tommy rasped. “D’you know how Tubbo’s doing?”

“He… he’s perfectly healthy, Tommy,” Phil said softly. “What  _ happened  _ in there?”

“Tubbo said you saved him—how? He didn’t even get any lung damage from the smoke,” Techno asked. His voice was raw, and his eyes were puffy. “What did you do?”

“You can answer that later,” Wilbur interrupted. “You must be exhausted.”

Tommy nodded, a little numb. 

“We’re so glad you’re alright,” Phil said, voice breaking over the words. Techno and Wilbur nodded vigorously. 

“I’ll be healed soon,” Tommy said quietly. 

Wilbur bunched up the fabric of Tommy’s hospital blanket in his fist. Techno ducked his head. 

Life would never be the same for their Tommy. The doctors said he was likely going to have permanent damage to his lungs, and there wasn’t enough unharmed skin on his body to graft anywhere. His skin would be rough with scars all over until the day he died. 

He would be healed, but he would not be the same. 

Tommy’s consciousness was a fickle thing as the days passed.

One member of his family always stayed by his side, rotating out when one needed to go to work or school. Wilbur and Techno lived a few cities away in a shared apartment, but they were equally determined to stay close, living in their childhood home until Tommy wanted them gone. 

Even though it felt like the world was crashing down around them, life outside their family kept trudging on.

Sometimes, Tommy would wake with just as much enthusiasm in his scratchy voice as it had always been. Sometimes, he only had the strength to smile.

It was the toll of his body sewing itself back together, the doctors said. The more rest he gets, the sooner he’ll heal. 

Of course, that didn’t mean that when the nurses changed Tommy’s bandages on his eighth day in the hospital, they were expecting to see unmarred skin. 

Apart from a few places on his back, Tommy’s skin had somehow gone back in time. It was still red, and hot to the touch, but the blisters and blood had regressed down to innocent little patches of sunburns. They took him off the knockout painkillers and started applying basic aloe beneath his bandages. Eventually, they stopped wrapping him altogether. 

His lungs also improved at a dramatic rate. The doctors said that the organs were nearly all the way dead when he’d first been brought in. Now he breathed with little more than a wheeze, and already that was clearing up, too. 

When Tommy’s back—which experienced the worst of the burns—healed all the way to simple bubbled skin, He was discharged from the hospital with a handful of drugstore medications and a bottle of aloe vera. He didn’t even need an inhaler. 

His family asked, again and again, what was going on—what happened? How did Tubbo survive? How did  _ you  _ survive?—Tommy gave them a simple reply:

“What can I say, I’m a gift!” 

He refused to elaborate until the day he was released from the hospital. When the doctor left to get his medication after a final checkup, Tommy turned to the three of them and promised to give them the full story once they all got home. 

They drove back to the house in anxious silence, and every time the car turned so Tommy’s window was in the sun, Techno stretched out his wide red coat to offer shade. Tommy didn’t really need it, but the thought was appreciated. 

They arranged themselves in the living room, with Tommy in the big armchair. Phil brought Tommy a glass of ice water, and Tommy took a few sips before placing it on a coaster on the coffee table. 

“Well,” Tommy said with a little laugh. “I guess you’re all waiting for an explanation.”

“You could say that,” Techno said at the same time Phil murmured, “take your time.”

Tommy laughed again, then shook his head. 

“Alright. Well—basically, I’m a gift. I know you’re all tired of that phrase—don’t give me that look, Wilbur, I’m explaining it,” Tommy folded his arms and leaned back in his chair, rolling his eyes. “I know you’re all tired of that phrase. The problem is that… well, there aren’t any better words to describe it. This isn’t the kind of thing that can be defined, but I’ll try my best.

“I don’t know if you guys remember my fifth birthday very well, but on that day, you—Techno—asked if I remembered being born. I said I didn’t, but that rules don’t apply to me. That was true. I don’t remember being born because I wasn’t.

“I’m not strictly… human. Well, I am, but not like you. The reason I don’t have a gift is because I  _ am  _ a gift. Or rather, I’m an energy, all tied up in human form. Even when I was a baby, I knew more than I was supposed to. I also knew that there was no way to explain it to you, because it’s sort of impossible. 

“Sometimes when I try to move, I’ll feel like I’m floating. Other times, it’s like trying to swim through sand. I breathe, and the world breathes with me. The world reacts to me, not the other way around. And I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, but it’s just the truth. I don’t speak the language of the universe, I  _ am  _ the language. 

“And I’m not trying to say that I’m some—some sort of  _ god  _ or anything like that, because I’m definitely, definitely not. I just… am. And part of that… ‘being’ or whatever you wanna call it—is that I can feel the world around me. I’m distinctly aware of every drop in temperature, and every cell within every blade of grass. 

“Along with that awareness comes the knowledge that everything happens for a reason. It gets hot in the summer so it can get cold in the winter, and it gets dark at night so it can become bright during the day. In everything, there is balance. Things happen, things live, and things die.

“But just because I  _ know  _ all this doesn’t mean I have to like it. If I really wanted to, I could make it so it was always sunset, and the weather was always warm. I could make everyone on earth immortal, or I could kill them in an instant. But that would disrupt the balance. I’m not supposed to influence the universe, I’m just supposed to be aware of it.

“When that fire started, and I realized I wasn’t going to be able to get us out without changing something, I panicked. I saw myself extinguishing the fire, and in order to restore balance, a freak rockslide starts a thousand miles away. I saw myself knocking down a wall, but it lands on a patch of grass which creates a mysterious plague that was never supposed to exist until the world needed to right itself. I didn’t know what to do.

“Because as much as I sound like some wise old force of nature that sees humans as—as playthings, or something—I dunno—I’m still Tommy. And my best friend was about to die in a fire that I  _ knew  _ I could stop, but had to choose not to. 

“But then it hit me: what if I could save Tubbo, but accept all the consequences of the balance onto myself? That way, nothing in the rest of the world would be affected, and Tubbo would survive. I could let the fire burn, just as it was supposed to, and I could take on the pain of dying twice. 

“So that’s what I did. I held onto Tubbo as tight as I could, and focused on getting him clean air to breathe, and pushing the flames away from his body. Instead, I directed them towards myself, and waited. That’s why Tubbo made it out unscathed while I was so badly hurt. I held it all. 

“Then, in the hospital, the universe realized that it wasn’t my time to die, especially since I would’ve needed to die twice—one for me, one for Tubbo. The weight of that death would’ve set off a rupture so intense that it might’ve been disastrous. So I focused on not dying, and healed myself back up to tip-top shape. 

“So that’s the full story—as best I can explain it. And before you get angry and ask why I didn’t tell you before—I did, so many times. You just didn’t listen. That’s all.”

Tommy took a sip from his glass. 

Then, finally, Phil dropped his head into his hands. 

“I knew I should’ve picked up more books on parenting.”


End file.
